The tide of emigration that flowed to Australia in consequence of the wise
administration of the affairs of the colony while Sir Richard Burke was
Governor, did much to reclaim the inland portion away back from the
coast. The success of the emigrants depended to a large ex tent on the
class of persons who came to the new country to carve out a home in what was
then a wilderness. It is now difficult for the people .of the present time to
realise the difficulties the emigrants who landed
in Sydney in '37 and soon after went into the interior of the colony, which
was then known as new country, had to overcome.

The emigrants landing in those days got no assistance from the
Government; free grants of land had ceased before that time. Many of the new
arrivals had to push back two or three hundred miles from Sydney before they
could secure a portion of land whereon to settle. The isolated position of
the homes of many of the settlers cut them off from communication with all centres of population.

I have now before me a letter I received recently from a lady who was
born in the Albury district, in which she writes:-
'I can re member many incidents that occurred when I was three years of age.
When my brother Jack and I were taken down to Yass to be baptised,
he was then five and I was three years old. I have seen five of one family baptised in Wagga at the same
time, and I have known several couples go from Wagga
and the neighbourhood to Yass to get married. The
first clergyman I saw in the Gundagai district was Bishop Broughton, of the
Anglican Church, who had a carriage to travel in. He remained a night at
Robert Jenkins' Bangus Station. I have heard of
Father Lovett, of Yass, and Father Terry (the pioneer priest) having visited
Tumut, Gundagai and Albury in the early days of settlement. Father Terry had
a cattle station on the Billabong, between Kyeamba
and Ten-mile Greek, in the early days, but he seldom visited the property.
When the ship Lady Macnaghten
sailed from Cork Harbour in November, '36, the late
Joseph Cox, of Livingstone Gully, with his wife and six children, started for
Australia.

On the voyage an epidemic of fever broke out. The vessel was
inadequately supplied with medical requisites. To add to the seriousness of
the situation the doctor died, and then suitable food for the children and
sick people ran short. Joseph Cox was stricken down with fever and during his
illness his wife died. Before the ship reached Sydney 72 of those who started
died, and several others after landing died in the quarantine station. Two of
the passengers were young women named Mary and Margaret Maloney. Those girls
were friends of the Cox family before starting and by their attention to the
children when their mother died and the father was laid up with fever, were
probably the means of saving the lives of the youngest ones. When Joseph Cox left
the quarantine station he had six children to provide for, who were all
females except the late John Cox, of Mangoplah, who
was the eldest. Towards the end of the year '37 Joseph Cox married one of the
young women, Mary Maloney, who had attended to his children on the voyage,
and then started for the Murrumbidgee where be settled at Gobarralong.

In 1838 he planted a paddock of wheat which he harvested about the
end' of November, the time my wife was born. Margaret Maloney was not long in
the colony when she married John Dodd, who resided near Appin. In '41, from
the favourable reports he received from Cox, Dodd
moved to Tumut, where he settled close to where Brungle
Bridge now stands. At this time Cox was settled on Brungle
Creek. When Dodd settled on the Tumut River he had a herd of superior cattle.
A couple of years after Dodd went to Tumut he was thrown from his horse, and
was so severely injured that he never thoroughly recovered, so the management
of his affairs chiefly devolved on his wife, who reared a large family, and
died in Wagga at the age of 86 years.

John Cox married in '45, and he and Joseph Cox took up Livingstone
Gully Station the succeeding year. This was before there was a house in Wagga. My wife remembers the journey from Tumut to her
father's new home. There was then a number of houses
in Gundagai; and she states her mother went there to buy goods, and that her
father got one of his drays repaired on the south side of the river.

When passing Mundarlo Station my wife met
Miss Emma Sawyer, after wards Mrs. P. S. F. Stephen, who for many years
resided in Wagga. The 'Sawyer family took up Mt. Adrah Station in 1844. Matthew Sawyer, sen., is still re Biding at Bethungra.
Soon after Joseph and John Cox settled at Livingstone Gully. Michael Norton
built a slab and bark hut at Wagga, and soon
afterwards erected a lockup and court house. Norton had been in the British
army, and had been in the war against the Maories
in New Zealand. He was a studious man. I remember when lie resided in
Gundagai that he used to borrow books from my father. Norton frequently
visited Livingstone Gully, and often supplied Cox with old newspapers. Joseph
and John Cox were not long at the Gully before they had two paddocks cleared
and fenced for wheat growing.

Joseph Cox planted an orchard, and some of the trees are still
standing, and are now 70 years old. About the same time as the two Cox
families came to the Gully, Nicholas and Tom Troy left Tumut, and got a
license from the Crown Lands Commissioner, who then resided at Tumut, to
occupy a station on the left bank of the Kyemba
Creek, about 18 miles from Wagga. The Cox and Troy
families had been friends at Tumut. Tom Troy was my wife's god father. Troy,
like other settlers, grew wheat for home use. Troy's wheat paddock was near
the right bank of Kyeamba Creek, and only
about a furlong on the south side of Toole's Creek
bridge. Although the land where Troy Brothers grew wheat has not been
cultivated for the last 60 years, the plough furrows can still be seen
plainly where the present road from Wagga to Kyeamb'a crosses that old cultivation paddock where wheat
was grown 70 years ago. Some few years back when I was chairman of the
league formed to promote the construction of a railway from Wagga to Tumbarumba there was a
good season in the district for the production of wheat and hay. I considered
that a favourable time to make the agricultural
capabilities of the district known as widely as possible. I therefore
arranged with the manager of the 'Daily
Telegraph' in Sydney to send one of the agricultural reporters to Wagga so that I could drive him round and show him the
magnificent harvest that was then being garnered.

On one of the days I was driving the reporter round through the
harvest fields of Lake Albert, Forest Hill, etc., and during the day I took
him to the top of the highest hill I could find, and standing on the seat of
the buggy, I asked him to look round in various directions, and I then said,
'We have now in view fully 20,000 acres of wheat and hay that is now being
harvested, which is equal, if not superior, to any other 20,000 'acres in any
part of Australia. The reporter agreed that in all his travels he had not
seen crops so good. In the early days, when the wheat had to be cut with the
reaping hook, and thrashed by the flail, or the grain trampled out by horses,
a wheat field on the stations rarely exceeded five acres, and 10 acres would
be considered a large one. What marvelous progress agriculture has made since
then. In '45, '46. and '47 the vacant spaces south
and south-east from Wagga were fast filling up. In
'46 Dan and Tom Toole took up Toole's Creek
Station. Dan Toole had been a sheep overseer on John Keighran'sBrungle Station some years before, and was well
known to Joseph and Tom Cox. Both Dan and Tom Toole had been overlanders to South Australia with cattle. While her
husband was erecting a hut on the new station, Mrs. Dan Toole re sided with
Joseph Cox's family at Livingstone Gully.

Tom Toole was known to me as far back as '44,
and Dan a year later. Both these men were frequently on the overland
track to South Australia in the early days of taking store bullocks to the Kapunda and Burra copper mines.
The black tribes were numerous, cunning and fierce. When Dan Toole erected a
hut and stockyard his wife left Livingstone Gully to reside on the station, and soon after her husband and his men started overlanding, the woman was left on the station alone, she
then having no children. My wife, when a girl of eight or nine years, would
occasionally stop a few days with Mrs. Toole to break the loneliness. The old
Toole's Creek hut and stockyard disappeared more
than 60 years ago, and the place became unoccupied. The land on which the
station hut and stockyard stood is now owned by Jeremiah Doola,
my wife's sister's husband.